#buckyisdisabled

You're still gesticulating wildly, but Poe can see when the switch flips in your head, when all the frustration you keep for him fades from an all-consuming fire fueled by fear, to the low-level exasperation that you always have towards him.

He can also see the exact moment you realize you've essentially shoved him against a wall, caging him in with your own body: your gaze darkens, breath coming out shallower and more quickly - not that he's doing much better.

“I came back,” Poe whispers softly, fingers catching at your hip to pull you closer, now that you've run out of words. “I always come back.”

You make a plaintive noise low in your throat. “I know. I know you do. But you could…be a little more careful.”

“I don't do anything I don't think I'll survive,” Poe says. He can't promise to be more careful, not with your respective lines of work, but he can offer you that modicum of truth. Everything he does, he's confident will work out in his favor. 

And he can see the argument that's rising up within you at that, can already hear you pointing out all the times he's gotten in over his head because of his certainty things will work in his favor - 

But at the last minute, it dissipates and your shoulders sag a little. You shift closer to him, a new kind of heat in your eyes that Poe vastly prefers, brought on by your closeness and the adrenaline. 

“Okay,” you whisper, conceding, while your eyes dart between his mouth and his eyes and back down again, like now that you're no longer distracted by worry you're distracted by him. 

It never fails to thrill him, the way he has that effect on you. Can't help the grin that rises up across his face, lighting up his eyes and crinkling them at the corners. “I have the feeling that you're trying not to kiss me, and I give you permission to just do it.”

You level him with a look over his faux innocent tone, severe enough that Poe thinks he's misjudged the time to joke but then it evaporates as you grip him by the collar and haul him down to greedily press your lips against his. 

Poe's arms snake around your waist, drawing you even closer and maker if that isn't his favorite part about kissing you after a mission: because despite his heart fluttering, warmth suffusing every one of his veins and begging for release, this is the moment when his body finally knows it's safe, that he can relax and not be on alert.

You're gonna make him learn though. “Nope. You're not talking your way out of this one, Dameron. I won fair and square: take off your clothes."

Poe groaned and dropped back against the edge of his mattress. "It's not fair, you've barely lost anything."

It was true: you'd gotten extremely lucky with your hand this round, and Poe had gotten an extraordinarily lousy round. The only thing he had left, besides his underwear, was his shirt, which he had now just lost with his final play.

"If you just wanted me out of my clothes hotshot, you just had to ask," you remind him before you nudge him with your foot. "Come on, pop your shirt off."

"Want me to take my time with it?" Poe shot back, raising an eyebrow at you as he unbuttoned his shirt.

You grinned. "I just figured I'd take my time with you when you're done."

They could've been too late.

They weren't though, which Steven is quick to remind him as Jake holds you until you fall asleep that night, relishing in the rise and fall of your chest, the tiny puffs of air you breathe against his throat as you burrow as close to him as possible.

When Marc wakes up the next morning, however, the bed beside him is empty. He's up in an instant, heart hammering a tattoo against his ribcage, and your name on the tip of his tongue —

But then you pad around the bookcase that obscures his sight of the kitchen, wearing a pair of boxers and one of his shirts, two steaming mugs in your hand. Noticing his look of distress, you wince and hold one of the cups up higher than the other, “Sorry, didn't mean to scare you.”

"You -” he stops himself, seeing no point in lying and partially because he's still working to get air back into his lungs. Marc crosses the room in a few east strides, carefully extricates the mugs from your hands to sit on one of little tables Steven has set up to carry books, and pulls you in for a hug, kisses the top of your head - "it's alright. I coulda brought you some coffee.”

“No, I know, I just…” you falter for a minute, pulling back just enough that you can look at him - really look at him, his sleep tousled hair, his dark soft eyes, and inviting mouth - and your heart skips a beat, it really does. “I just wanted to thank you for saving me last night.”

"That's our job,” Marc says. "No need to thank us.”

Your eyes crinkle a little bit, sparking with mischief. “No?”

"Nah.”

"Not even if the thank you came in the form of a kiss?”

He wavers, then smiles just a tiny bit, which is a rare sight but becoming a little more frequent since they met you. “I mean, I'm not gonna say no to that but I mean it. You're ours to protect and we always will.”

You melt against him at that, expression softening too. “You're mine too,” you say as you draw him in to kiss him slowly and it's like coming back to life, kissing you, loving you, saving you.

You're curled up against his side, his arm under and around you, fingertips gliding up and down your arm absentmindedly as you draw circles against his chest, breathing him in, one of your legs draped over his and you think that nothing can possibly compare to this: no supernova, no nebula, no sunrise, could ever make your breath stall in your chest quite like it does when you tip your head back to look up at Poe to quietly observe his profile as he watches the ceiling: the stubbled curve of his jaw, the softness of his lips, the wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes.

He'd been infodumping about ships a moment ago when he'd suddenly fallen quiet with the kind of sigh that told you he was all right but words were becoming too much of an effort as tired as he was. Or maybe even from how happy he was, given that he catches you looking at him and smiles softly at you.

His hand stills against your skin and abruptly he shifts so that he's lying on his side: your leg jams between his and a heavier breath falls from his lips as his dark eyes slide down your face to your lips and back up again, a question in his gaze that he starts to open his mouth to verbalize, but you beat him to it, leaning in to kiss him.

His arm wraps around your body, skimming up your spine to hold you firmly in place against him when you tease open his lips to press your tongue into his mouth, drawing a low noise from the back of his throat that makes your stomach flip.

Maker, you adore all the lovely noises he makes. You don't think you'll ever get tired of it.

You don't think Poe ever will either, not when you pull back to spare some attention to his neck, ghosting soft kisses along his skin, making him gasp and his grip on you grow tighter.

You've reached the junction of his neck and his shoulder when he whispers sleepily, "Love you," into the space between you.

You glance up at him, but find his eyes are shut, eyelashes fluttering slightly.

“Love you too,” you reply, touched that out of all the things that could have slipped out at this moment, it is a reminder of how much he loves you.

Poe blinks down at you, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. "You good?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, cupping his face with your hand and sweeping your thumb across his cheekbone. “I got you.”

And despite how much of a crappy mood you'd been in earlier when you'd crawled into bed earlier, you feel your resolve to stay irritable begin to crack over the sparkle in Poe's eyes as he gets himself worked up on flight strategies from a bygone era, purposefully goading you here and there with jabs at long standing friendly arguments the two of you share, up and until —

“Oh that's banthashit, Dameron, and you know it!” 

Poe isn't able to suppress his delighted grin as he tips his head towards you as you finally throw your comforter down and start defending the T-47 model (that he still, privately, thinks flies like a board of wood), your voice rising with every few minutes from the passion of your argument.

You pause to catch your breath and it's then you finally notice the giddiness on Poe's face, and you can't help but laugh a puzzled, "What?” at him. 

“There it is,” Is the response you get which is just real helpful, honestly, Dameron. 

“There what is?”

Poe leans in, presses his mouth against yours to kiss you once sweetly. When he pulls away, he whispers fondly, "There's that smile I love so much.”

Your heart seizes a little, over the look of adoration on his face, over his words, but you thump him slightly on the shoulder anyway as you choke out, "You devious…blurrg.”

“Cheered you up though, didn't it?”

"By being annoying.”

“Annoyingly charming.”

You roll your eyes up at the ceiling. "You're a maker damned menace.”

Poe kisses your cheek and says, entirely meaning it, "Your maker damned menace.”